DDD Adelaide 2025
DDD Adelaide is a community-focused software development conference held annually in Adelaide, South Australia. How did this year's event go? Pretty well I think!
Yesterday we ran DDD Adelaide 2025 - a community-driven conference for everyone involved in software development and related activities in Adelaide.
With an ever so slightly bigger attendance than last year, our venue again was the University of Adelaide. The delicious catering was provided by Cargo Catering and warm refreshments by B3 Coffee - both who have been with us since 2019.
I think we’re starting to find our stride with organising the event. Setup on Saturday morning went smoothly and no major dramas to worry about was good. The only thing beyond our control was the weather. It rained most of the day but at least the 3 lecture theatres and the atrium (where sponsors and food and drinks were located) were all relatively close together, so it didn’t put a damper on things 😃
One new thing this year that we’re trialling is recording some of the presentations. We’ve partnered with TxRx Technologies on this and hope to be able to publish some of the sessions in the coming weeks.
Geoffrey Huntley was our keynote speaker. I particularly liked the fact that he came dressed exactly how he appeared in his promo image that we’d used before the conference.
Being one of the organisers, you don’t always get a chance to sit in all the sessions, but with this year running smoothly I was able to relax a bit and enjoy some really interesting presentations.
Geoffrey Huntley’s keynote
Morning tea and lots of discussions happening
I was then acting as room host for a couple of sessions, including James Bannan with a really interesting talk about the history of Steganography
And Ashley Mannix on Industrial strength testing for complex software
Then lunch! I’m not a vegetarian, but I picked that option as there were some spare ones, and it was really nice.
A few more sessions after lunch and then it was time for afternoon tea, and wow that was so yummy.
Last session I was back room hosting, and caught Samira talking about the challenges of introducing event-driven architecture.
The day finished with Andrew Best and myself hosting the closing prize draws and thank-yous. Another change we introduced this year was that to be eligible for the prizes you had to have submitted some feedback. Turns out that’s a great incentive for people to give feedback!
Two bonus highlights for me for the day that I wanted to mention:
- Catching up with Nigel Spencer who I worked with way back in 2010 and who is now based in the USA. He timed a trip back to Adelaide to visit family perfectly - or was it a visit to DDD Adelaide and a bit of family catch up on the side? 😃 Random fact: Nigel was a speaker at one of the original CodeCampSA events many years ago that were the predecessor of what is now ‘DDD Adelaide’.
- Meeting Melissa Houghton in person for the first time. I’ve known Melissa for a few years but this is the first time we’ve been in the same place at the same time. She’s been involved with organising DDD Melbourne and now DDD Perth, so it was a lovely surprise to discover she’d ‘popped’ over from Perth to checkout the Adelaide event.
In the next few weeks the organising team will first (and most importantly!) catch our breath, then catch up to review all the feedback that has been submitted and do our final debrief. And then in the new year we’ll start planning towards DDD Adelaide 2026!
Thanks to the awesome organising team Andrew, Claire, Harnoor, Isaac, Ryan and Will. What a great team to serve with planning and putting this event on together.
Extra special thanks to my family for stepping up to volunteer on the day. It’s a very early start and a long day but they were wonderful.